John Cuthber

Correct. I wonder if anyone else has caught on. This trick has the same adantage as using thequickbrownfox in that it's easy to remember and isn't vulnerable to dictionary attack.

I think you need to know 2 things about HSbF6; it's a very strong acid and its conjugate base is a very poor nucleophile.

So far as I can tell you can't have an angle ( whether it's 90 degrees or something elde) without havig two straight lines so the simplest unit of spatial thought might be the straight line. But hang on, you can't have a straight line without defining it as the shortest path between two points so the point must be even more fundamental than the line. Alos, on the graph plotting front, using axes at 90 degrees makes use of the fact thatt he two coordinates are orthogonal in the matematical sense- you can vary one without varing the other.

I use ******** for most things ;-) Seriously, YT's aproach might be easy to remember but its vulnerable to a dictionary search- you just need the right dictionary. Having said that, it meets the requirements for passwords where I work in that it uses upper and lower case letters and numbers. Maybe I will use it. Does anyone else care if I compromise the GSN? Another aproach is to use something like IMBTFOLPO GMEOITSTAMSASD Anyone recognise that?

I don't know a lot about IQ testing but I do know about puns. http://xkcd.com/559/

Just for a start re "Although the idea is nice- unimaginable amount of pure energy, no radiation..." What form do you think the energy comes out in.? Don't you realise that anihilations give rise to nothing but radiation?

The original purpose of IQ tests was to identify children who were not doing well at school so that they could be given more help. For that job I guess IQ tests work quite well. Aplication to anything else seems rather suspect; if the only thing you have that you can brag about is your IQ you really don't have anything to brag about. (and now the cue for lots of rambling replies) What is inteligence anyway?

It probably depends on the definition but I think scattering is immediate but fluorescence is slightly delayed- it's characterised by a half life so some photons are delayed by a considerable time.

If the virus were suddenly all to mutate into something harmless that would eradicate the disease; but it isn't going to happen. If I were suddenly to aquire "superpowers" I could eradicate the disease; but it isn't going to happen. If everyone were to engage in sex only with people who were born in the same calendar year as them, that would eradicate the disease (eventually); but it isn't going to happen. There are an infinite number of ways to eradicate the disease that are not going to happen. There's no real point discussing them. Among that list is total abstainance; why discuss it? I take your point about communism- it works for robots, but not for people. That means it's a bad system because, if it doesn't work for people it doesn't really work. " just can't believe how everyone is misconstruing his words..." The Pope's words were clear enough. "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem" What he said was wrong: condoms help. If he had said "Monogamy has a very low risk and is condoned by the church" that would have been fine. If he had said "Condoms reduce the risk of aquiring or spreading this disease but are anathema to the teachings of the church" that would have been fine too. But what he did was talk about condoms "which can even increase the problem" which simply isn't true. The net effect of condom use is to significantly reduce the spread of the disease.

"Ammonium" as a metal doesn't have much of an existence, but a solution of it in mercury does. Here's a reference. http://www.vias.org/encyclopedia/chem_ammonia_salts.html Since it decomposes in water to give hydrogen I guess it can be viewed as reducing the water but that's not clear.

"He believes (and correctly) that abstinence is the key to solving the epidemic." He may believe it, but that doesn't make it correct. "While this is true, we ALL know that that will never happen." If universal abstainance won't ever happen then it cannot be the answer to anything; please make up your mind. If he articulates things so badly that people think that they should stop using condoms then he ought to be replaced by someone who will do less damage.

As transdecimal guessed, the point in post #25 where it is asserted that HIV can get through condoms. It's clearly nonsense, that's why I wanted to know where the idea came from. Incidentlly I note with mild amusement that this "The most reliable ways to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), are to abstain from sexual activity or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with an uninfected partner." fails to point out that masturbation is the safest form of sex there is from the point of view of disease transmission (and it's pretty low-risk from other points of view too). Of course, if it had said that then perhaps nobody would have been able to say that the CDC's point of view coincided with the Pope's. Also, while I haven't been able to track it down there was a point raised in (I think) New scientist wher the Pope's words were being misrepresented by the Vatican's spokesmen. What they said he said didn't tally with what he actually said. (EDIT) I have just had a look at that webpage. It's the wrong pope. It's dated before the current one came to power, so I'm not certain how relevant it now is. Still, I wait for the Pope to speak out in favour of a quick hand job- at worst you are only risking your imortal soul- not anyone else's.

I'd still like to see the sources for that assertion.

Does anyoone know where I can get hold of roughly a hundred million metres of (very low loss) optical fibre? Then I could do the experiment. I think it would work- optical delay lines certainly do and I don't see any difference in principle.

I think Pascla's wager does a fine job of illustration religious bigotry (though, to be fair in his time it would have been exected of him). He only seems to have considered one form of religion and one possible God. To ignore the fact that there are many "Gods" makes rather a mess of the betting. If there are, for example, threee major religions then you have a two in three chance of picking the wrong one and suffering etermal damnation for "worshiping false idols" or its equivalent. With odd like that you might as well forget the whole thing

"actually i guess NH3 also exists in equilibrium with NH4OH" Not to any meaningful extent. As far as I'm aware nobody has come up with any evidence for the existence of NH4OH.

One of the interesting things about magnesium is that it burns in CO2. 2Mg + CO2 -> 2MgO +C

Oddly "1 OR 2 OR 3 " gives fewer hits. (15,980,000,000 )

If your idea is novel then patent it and sell the rights one of the cosmetics companies; get them to do the work. If not then it's never going to be worth the trouble.

As sson as you let it cool it makes NH4Cl again. I guess that in theory you could do this in a gas centrifuge or something and separate the gases but there really are easier ways to get NH3 and HCl.

That's a pretty much standard way of making ammonia in the lab. It works just fine.

It decomposes that way if you heat it.

One possibility is stop frame animation. Like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSMRPKM1evk

Does any of this actually answer the OP's question?

Wrong in every major aspect. The black stuff in the OP might be copper oxide or just copper. It's hard to tell without rather more information. Adding sulphur to water won't get you anything but wet sulphur. If you search this site for sulphuric acid I suspect you will find out how it can be made.